Hiotomi
by Digicowboy
Summary: Chapter 2 now up, as Hiotomi enters the Ranger centre to begin her training!
1. Prologue

DC: This is the story of Hiotomi, my Ranger on PSO. If your character wants in, just let me know in the reviews. I'll need obvious things like age, and so on, but also what Section ID (Hiotomi's a Whitill) and what relation they have to Hiotomi's tale. (How they met and so on) There is quite an important slot for a ranger with the strange eye covering metal thing, but it's not a good guy role, just to warn you. This is my first PSO fic, so don't bite too hard…

And I don't own PSO as a concept, only as a game and an abstract sculpture composed of shoes.

The Saga of Hiotomi 

Prologue

The class was loud, and disruptive, and verging on breaking out in a dozen small fights. Then again, it was the last day of the term before the Landing festival, when the inhabitants of the planet Ragol celebrated the day that Pioneer 2 landed on the surface and their home was secured. Mr Cray sighed. It was obvious that he wasn't going to get anywhere with them in anything constructive today. Then again…

 "Class? Pay attention, please." Bizarrely, they did. "As you all know, tomorrow is the first day of the Landing Festival –" A small cheer went up from the assembled class   "-And I suppose I should honour that. No, Thompson, I am not letting you go early, even if it is last period. But I'm going to tell you a Ranger's tale." That got their attention. "We can never forget that if it wasn't for the Hunters, Forces and Rangers, we'd have never managed to settle here. This is the tale of Hiotomi." He paused for a moment, revelling in the sense of having everyone paying him attention, a rare thing for a teacher. He reached for the book he kept under his desk, the historical document.

"Let me see, where to begin…"

Part one: My Genesis

Where to begin? There is so much to tell, so much that I want to write down so that what I have seen, and what I have done, does not fade away into the past to be forgotten. But I am, after all, only human, and what I write is subject to my own bias. This is not absolute truth, but it is as close as I can get to it. 

I was 16 when Pioneer 2 left for our new home, but my story begins before even that.

I was born Hiotomi Cardion to a prosperous British family on a station in orbit around a planet. I can't even remember which one it was now, but I assume it was Earth, or the Moon, or perhaps Saturn. The next few years passed as is standard for small babies, Newman or Human, and as such need no explanation. My first steps play no particular part in this tale. The only relevant fact from those early years was the death of my mother, and my subsequent raising by my father. I never grieved my mother.

 Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she was a lovely person (In fact, I know so. My father was besotted with her, and he was not an easy man to please.), but those few memories I had of her were blurred, even then. The passage of time has made it harder still to recall her face, or her voice, or anything else. Strangely, I remember her hands with what appears to me to be astonishing clarity. She had slender, elegant hands, and I often wonder if my hands would have been that elegant if I had chosen another profession. 

 As I mentioned before, my father was solely responsible for my upbringing, and it is largely due to his influence that I became a Ranger. He raised me as best he could, but he was no replacement for a mother. He had been a Ranger himself in his prime, but a run-in with a land mine had forced him into early retirement. He fed me and bathed me and all those things, but I was left with a different attitude than all the other girls I knew of my age (I think that I had reached my fifth year) – Where they were all content to wear dresses and play with dolls, I was with my father and his friends as they recounted stories of their past battles and quests. The other girls thought I was strange, and thought of me with contempt, and I thought that they were silly, and thought of them with disdain. As you can imagine, it wasn't a match made in heaven.

I was 8 when I knew I wanted to be a Ranger, for better or for worse, and that was when my training began in earnest. I had been playing with my father's old weapons for several years, but –

 Oh, don't worry. The photon charges had been removed.  Honestly….

 - but this would be genuine training with other potential Rangers with the Hunter's Guild. I remember the first day I went, my father looked so proud… 

We trained under a grizzled old Ranger by the name of Cluff, who had a lot of energy for such an old man. 

 I wonder if he's still alive.

That first day I arrived, we were split into two groups, male and female, (Essentially for sleeping purposes only; we all trained together)  and given our training uniform, which was like a low grade version of what we wear presently – the boys were given the shoulder units that mark them out from Hunters, and we were given our combat slacks, our boots, and all the rest. The next day, we started training.

TO BE CONTINUED

DC: As you may have guessed, this is by way of being a short introductory chapter...the next chapter will cover training to be a Ranger, and after that (Should all go to plan) the fun begins.....Later!


	2. Genesis two My Training Begins

**The Saga of Hiotomi**

DC: As ever, I don't own Phantasy Star Online as a concept, and since my abstract shoe sculpture got lost down the back of the sofa, I only own it as a game....Oh, and for a picture of Hiotomi, follow this link like a sort of Bloodhound.

 Perhaps a Beagle.

MY GENESIS (Part two)

 I woke up that morning, and I was, if only for a few moments, disorientated by my surroundings. I was only eight years old, remember, and due to my self inflicted alienation from the other girls my age, this was one of the first times I'd not slept secure in the knowledge that my father was nearby.

 Even now, I still miss those days when things seemed so much simpler. But I don't suppose we can have everything we want, can we?

 In time, that feeling passed. The dormitory I shared with 9 other girls would be my room for the next five years, and the Ranger Centre my home. I began to make tentative friendships with these girls, all hoping for the same profession as me. Forgive me; I'm getting ahead of myself.

 I remember laying in bed awake for at least an hour in the early hours of that morning, my head swimming with the glamour of my chosen career ( 'Ranger Cardion saves hundreds!' 'Hiotomi uncovers government secret!' and so on. I have since concluded that I was perhaps something of an idiot when I was younger.)

and before I knew it, we were getting up and changing into our training gear, and the air was filled with the chatter of excited pre-adolescent girls.

After we had eaten, Cluff addressed us all, male and female alike.

"Welcome, cadets, to the Ranger Centre. You are about to embark on the most rigorous training experience of your lives so far. Not all of you will make it to the final goal. Some of you may not make it past the week's end. Becoming a Ranger takes time – Lots of time, and lots of patience, and lots of determination.' He talked for several more minutes, but that was a long time ago, and I can't remember all of it. He talked about the difference of training for Ranger duties – it was not like the easy comradeship of the Hunters, who worked closely together when they could, for the most part. (I suppose if all you have is a melee weapon, you want as many allies as possible) Nor was it like being a Force (Training to be a Force is gentle. It can come as something as a surprise to someone, to find out that they have that kind of ability from birth, and they need all the support they can get.) Rangers are trained to work alone, to depend on no-one but themselves. His eyes misted up towards the end, and I recall wondering if he was reliving his own quests.

   Shortly afterwards, we were dismissed and our first day of training began. The rest of the week is, to me, a blur of general fitness examinations, of hand-eye                   co-ordination, and of our first experiences with the Rifle, the staunch fallback of every Ranger. It was there that I discovered anew the joy of my life – weaponry.

Doesn't that make me sound bloodthirsty? Don't worry; I'm actually quite nice once you get to know me.

   Cluff was right, by the way. A full quarter of our number didn't make it through the initial week, and our dormitory had three empty beds by the end.

 The first year was much of the same, and bearing in mind that I was among the youngest Rangers there, it wasn't exactly easy for me. Not in terms of bullying, you understand. Anybody who tried to pick on me mentally was ignored with that self-same disdain I had felt for the girls in the dresses I had used to know.

(I've not told anyone this before, but when things get bad, and I wonder what might have been, I think of those girls, and I suddenly feel a lot better about my chosen path.) Anybody who tried to pick on me physically usually ended up the worse for wear. Small, they couldn't seem to grasp, could mean 'harder to hit'. In time, we remaining candidates were assigned our section ID's, and – 

 By the way, I'm aware that the purpose of the section ID's might not have been explained to you, so here's the basic gist. Rangers, Hunters, and Forces have to sign a contract when they sign up to the Hunter's Guild, known as the Hunter's Licence. The reason that the Hunter's Guild can exist without Governmental influences is that one clause of the licence states that, in a situation of war, all members are obligated to support the army. The ten Section ID's are each meant to have a mixture of complementing skills, allowing them to accomplish missions the army couldn't handle without ten times the people.)

 Anyway, I had been assigned to Whitill, where I remain to this day. And that was where I met Mortel and Tynian. Mortel was about the same age as I was (Roughly nine, or just older), with sandy blonde hair, piercing green eyes, and very little in the way of personality, choosing to keep himself to himself for the most part. He couldn't have been more different than Tynian. They were the same age, and of roughly the same build, but Tynian's hair was black, and his eyes were an open, friendly blue. Tynian was very open with everyone, and we three became friends rapidly. (I say 'we three', but in reality Tynian and I talked whilst Mortel seemed to absorb everything we said.) It wasn't until later that we discovered something incredible. What Mortel lacked in conversational skills, he made up for in stealth. 

 That entire session is fixed into my mind as clearly as the first time I saw Ragol. We were all filed into the Ranger Centre Biodome – a large, curved room filled with foliage, and Cluff motioned for silence, getting it almost immediately. 

"During your quests, it is possible that you will come up against other Rangers. For example, you may have to protect an item, and they might have to destroy it. This is hardly ideal, but you need to know how to react if it happens. Please collect your weapons to your right –" He paused, then bellowed Rule One at the top of his voice.

"WHAT IS A RANGER WITHOUT A GUN?" His finger singled out a young girl of my acquaintance by the name of Lupin, who saluted smartly as we'd been instructed.

"A DEAD RANGER, SIR!" 

"Excellent, Cadet, excellent. The Biodome is large enough for you all to conceal yourselves. The exercise will begin five minutes after the last of you has their weapons – as ever, they're firing Tags, and Tags only. The most you'll get is stung, but we will be monitoring your performance. It's all against all, last man standing wins. And good luck."

I selected a sniper rifle, and as a second thought, stuck an Autogun into my waistband.

I jogged off into the 'Jungle' – As one of the first to arm myself, I had plenty of time to hide. I eventually chose a tree with dense foliage and low branches, and settled down to wait, smearing camouflage paint over my face. A klaxon sounded over to my right, signifying the start of the exercise. Nothing happened for a few minutes, my breathing so quiet I could barely hear it. Then I heard the familiar sound of a rifle being fired off to my right, and rapidly triangulated the source. I looked carefully through the scope of my Sniper, and allowed a small smile to creep across my face. A flicker of grey... A training uniform was in my sights. I decreased the magnification slightly, adjusted the focus, and let fly a bullet, hitting them in the shoulder with my Tag. (The Tag is the training bullet used by Rangers. When it hits a target, it marks it with a smear of paint coded to a specific Ranger). I smiled, then moved as fast as I could, as quickly as I could. Even the Sniper I was using wasn't totally silent, and if I could find a target by homing in on the sound of the bullet, so could someone else. 

After a few seconds, I paused, undecided. To stay in the tree was tantamount to suicide, and jumping to the next tree, while possible, and even easy to do, would make a lot of noise and rustling branches. That left the ground, and you can understand why I was reluctant to do _that_. I gazed around at the trees surrounding me, some of the birds that lived in the dome looking at me with the blankly stupid look all birds are born with. Then I knew what I could do…It was just a matter of waiting…I didn't have to wait long. A few seconds? Something like that. From somewhere ahead of me came a cry of surprise and another gunshot. Panicked by the noise, the birds in the trees around me leapt into the air, cawing in fear and shaking the trees as they left. I rose from my crouching position, running along the branch I had been on, before using the springy, resilient branch end to launch myself into the air, landing deep in the foliage of the next tree. 

One thing is certain. If I hadn't become a Ranger, I'd have been one hell of an acrobat.

 I repeated the process another couple of times before the birds settled down, thanks to the firing of my fellow cadets, ending safely away from my previous position. My heart was racing, not so much out of my leaping, but out of exultation. Life on a space station was, for the most part, a hard place for a child to grow up – everything is, by necessity, very sterile, and although I was born there, there was a sense of utter release in being among the trees and the animals. I suppose that now I have an entire planet to explore. Isn't it funny how things change?

  I moved through the trees like a wraith, my grey training outfit blending me into shadows to some extent, although not enough to stop me having a few tense moments as I eliminated my fellow cadets one by one. I stopped to catch my breath after running from a particularly angry victim of my Autogun, and that proved to be my downfall. There was a flash of movement in the corner of my eye, and an unseen assailant yanked my Sniper rifle off my back with one hand, whilst the other knocked my Autogun out of my fist. I was caught off guard to such an extent that I fell off the tree, landing harshly on my back. I gazed up into the tree as Martel gazed down at me sprawled on the ground below him. He grinned wolfishly. 

"What is a Ranger without a gun?" He asked, before pulling the trigger at my chest.

**TBC**  
  
DC: OK, I'm gonna have to change my plans slightly. Training might take up another two chapters maximum....Other than that, please tell me what you thought. Also, check out Kara Angitia's fic 'Thought Keeper' as well as 'One thousand lies' by Dark Angel 13388, for more Hiotomi appearances. (OTL is a future potential appearance, but read it anyway. It's cool.)


End file.
